Forgive and Forget
by azngirl123
Summary: The moral lesson that the young, nineteen-year-old Annabeth Chase had learned in her short life was that nothing truly lasted forever and she should never take such things for granted. Read to find out. Percabeth. Rated T for swearing. One-shot


**MUST READ AUTHOR'S NOTE! **

**AN: I know that I've been publishing new one-shots, but no updating my story. I'll try to update it soon, but I have HUGE writers block for it. The Last Olympian, besides the winning of the war and Rachel becoming the Oracle, didn't happen. Annabeth and Percy didn't get together and Annabeth didn't receive that job of rebuilding Olympus. There will be swearing in this story because they're older. I tried my best to keep them in character. I've has a lot of inspiration from other stories that I've read.**

**Disclaimer: I sadly don't own PJO; Rick Riordan does.**

The moral lesson that the young, nineteen-year-old Annabeth Chase had learned in her short life was that nothing truly lasted forever and she should never take such things for granted. When it came to her demigod life, people came and left as easy as the sun rose and set. The most recent case of someone leaving her would be her now current ex-boyfriend, Jason. Jason was a mortal she met at her school in New York. Over the past year, she was completely enchanted with him, his talents, his appearance, and the way he managed to knock her off her feet with admiration.

Her friendships became tense with her two best friends and her siblings at camp, and she spent less and less time with all of them due to Jason constantly being with her wherever she was, doing whatever with her, and just occupying most of her time. She wasn't able to attend camp for that past year.

Grover tried to find consolation in the fact that the relationship probably wouldn't last long enough for anything serious to happen, but Percy wasn't believing any of that crap. Percy wanted to run the first time he saw her kiss Jason lovingly. It crushed him to see that she was so mesmerized by some guy she barely even knew; he definitely was jealous, so green with envy that it wasn't him at all. Only if he knew why she started dating and why she jumped so quickly into a new relationship.

The beginning stages of her relationship were simple and sweet. He would always take her out to places despite her many pleas to stay in, and he treated her nicely, calling her all the time and showing her attention. As a result of the relationship, she wound up driving her two best friends away. Day after day, week after week, and month after month, they became more distanced than ever. The two males found female company in other places, hanging out with girls from the other cabins or hanging out with Rachel who was now the Oracle, not only to fill the void Annabeth had left, but to just try and move on in the world they were left in.

However, around the thirteenth month, things were taking a turn for the worse; the relationship she had tried so hard to keep above water was slowly sinking into the mud. She noticed Jason spending more time with his best female friend; even though that would seem normal, especially in her case, but she knew better. She knew that they had a very dramatic history following them ever since they were children. Because of that strong friendship beginning when they were younger, she felt like she shouldn't intervene whenever they wanted to spend time with each other; she knew how it was, to have a best friend that you want to spend every minute with. In his case, however, there was a different type of friendship following her boyfriend and the friend of his. Automatically, a little red flag went up whenever this girl was around.

When that fateful day came, Annabeth broke off the relationship as fast as when the relationship began. Deciding to be a sweet girlfriend by surprising him with take-out and a movie, she had walked into his house, the door being unlocked, right into his living room. She walked right into the room to witness both of them, Jason and his best "friend" breathless and kissing on the sofa in passion; passion that should never occur through best friends with a platonic relationship, as well as a guy who had a girlfriend in which he _supposedly_ adored and loved. She felt so betrayed, so hurt, so used, that she bolted out of the household without even shutting the door, leaving what she had originally intended to surprise him, in a crumpled mess on the floor.

She needed to get away, to find someone who would listen to her and be there for her. There was one person she wanted to run to, to jump into the arms of, but she was terribly afraid. Pushing down her first instinct, she drove to Camp to find Grover and make amends with him and hope that he could somewhat comfort her.

Walking into the borders of camp, she saw Chiron at the Big House. He looked at her and smiled; the smile soon turned into a frown when he saw that her eyes were bloodshot from all the crying she had done. He made no attempt speaking to her because it was clear that she didn't want to explain herself. She ran into the woods, thanking the gods that all the campers were in their cabins, to find Grover. She reached a clearing and there was her friend sitting at the base of a log and messing with his reed pipes.

Of course he had some aggravation and resentment towards the blond-haired woman, but seeing her, so broken and vulnerable, he couldn't help feel his heart go out to her. He pocketed the pipes he had been toying with and looked at her, his heart going out to her. He had never seen her like this in his entire life knowing her.

Her knuckles were white with the way she was tightly clutching her car keys in her hand. She tried to compose herself, only allowing one or two more tears to fall from her eyes. She felt so betrayed with everything that was going on in her life now, but she felt the need to go back to her family and friends, starting with Grover. He motioned her to sit down and she sat across from him.

"What's the trouble Annabeth?" Grover asked sympathetically.

"Jason is the damn trouble," she started, then sighed, "He cheated on me, and I dumped him not even a two hours ago."

"How heavy was the cheating?" he queried, curious.

"I walked in on him and that slut of a best friend of his making out on his couch. People have no _shame_!" she seethed.

"So what are you going to do now?" he asked her. "Things are already tense with everyone as it is."

She looked down at her clasped hands in her lap. "I'm going to try and repent."

"You're going to church?" he asked confused, dumfounded that she would even suggest a thing.

"No, you idiot, I'm going to try and beg Percy for his forgiveness. I don't know why I should even bother at all, he probably hates me!" She grumbled and sighed yet again, putting her head in her hands, hiding even more tears that were threatening to fall.

Grover put a hand on her shoulder comfortingly, "Annabeth, you should never think that Percy would ever hate you. He's just confused with everything that's been going on. You should've listened to us in the first place, but I guess you had to learn that on your own. I'm forgiving, sure, but I don't think that this whole situation will blow over so easily with Percy. He has been terribly hurt over the past year; ever since you started going out with Jason–"

"Can you not mention his name?" she requested.

"–that bastard," he continued as if he never even stopped, "he's been heartbroken. He basically took out that hurt on every single monster that came around."

"He did that?" she asked, now looking up, wiping her eyes.

"Yeah, he did," his tone softened, "and he misses you like a whole lot. He's too stubborn to even admit it though. He doesn't want to make the first move to try and put things back in place; he blames you for our friendships being put on hold."

"Of course, it's true," she moaned, putting her head back into her hands.

"You shouldn't have come to me first," he said suddenly, glancing at her. "I know you wanted to cool off, but you should've gone directly to him."

"Grover," she started, "you know more than anyone else in the world how confusing and platonic my relationship is with that boy. He's a mystery in himself. I've done some fucked up things in my lifetime, but this one takes it all. I've basically demolished and destroyed my relationship with my best friend who loves me for who I truly am over a guy who I thought even remotely liked me. I wanted to get away of the whole possibility of me and Percy ever being something, something more than friends, and I wound up messing everything up that we had."

"I don't think that _everything_ is messed up," he replied extending the word everything, patting her on the shoulder in comfort. "You still have a chance with him. You said it yourself, he loves you for who you are, just take that and throw caution into the wind. I know it's not like you to put away caution, but just do it Annabeth. I want to see the both of you happy and together, something I haven't seen in a long, _long_ time."

Looking up at him, she felt a hope course through her veins, "You think I still have a chance with Percy?"

"Of course you do; it's Percy." Was his only reply to her question.

"Then, I should go over to his cabin and try and talk to him?" she asked tentatively, running a hand through her blond locks, a nervous habit.

"I strongly recommend it, as well as telling me afterwards how everything went."

"Okay, I'll go," she said.

"Good luck, Annabeth," he replied while standing up.

"Thanks. I'll be needing it," she said, getting up as well. She leaned forward and gave him a hug, smiling when she felt it being returned. "I'm sorry for everything that I've put you guys through over the past year. I promise I'll never do it again."

"You better promise."

They parted ways and she made her way to the familiar cabin. When she reached the cabin, her hands were shaking. She finally gathered up all the courage and knocked four times on the door of the Poseidon cabin. She would always knock four times in the past, letting him know it was her. Hopefully he would answer the door.

There was no movement inside the room at first, but after about a few moments, the door swung open to reveal a young man with dark hair, sea green, quizzical eyes, and furrowed eyebrows. He waited there for her to speak.

It pained her to look into those sea green eyes, the ones she remembered falling in love with not so long ago.

"Hey Seaweed Brain," she tried to lighten up. But seeing that he wasn't answering to his nickname she tried a different path.

She asked, "Can I please talk to you? Maybe, come in?"

He stepped out of the way without a word, allowing her to enter his cabin. After she entered the cabin, he then walked over to his bed and sat down, again waiting for her to explain herself. Annabeth chose to sit on the bed across from his, collecting her thoughts as she did so.

"I came here to tell you something and to give you a long and very overdue apology. Which do you want first?" she looked up at him, seeing that he was staring intently at his ceiling instead of at her.

Speaking the first words she had heard in over a year, he said, "What do you want to tell me?"

Eye contact was a major struggle. Taking another deep breath, she said, "Jason and I are no more."

"Oh, gee, I'm so terribly sorry," he said, the words were dripping with sarcasm. "Are you expecting some kind of pity party?"

"No, I'm not," she said, her tone never changing. "I wanted to tell you the reasoning. I walked in on him having a heated make out session with his best friend. Remember her? Remember how you said she was bad news, and so was he? You were right all along, and I'm a fucking idiot for not realizing it sooner. I had to find out for myself, and lame as that sounds, and I wanted to come tell you the facts before you heard it from anyone else at school. I walked into his house, the door being unlocked, to find them both on the couch. I dropped everything I had in my hands and bolted out without looking back. I sped off in my car, and then I, well, I went to go think, and I felt like I should come to see you."

"What good would it do to talk to me? I'm the one who you abandoned, deserted, remember? What good is anything I'd have to say?" he asked, now sitting up and turning his gaze to fixate on her face. "I'm the one who you thought wasn't able to comprehend a relationship enough to even be your friend anymore. I am sorry that everything wound up happening this way, but you never had to shut me out of your life like that. I know I didn't like the guy and my instincts were right. You need to listen to me more and give me more credit, Annabeth."

Now it was her that couldn't bear to look at him, "I know." Her voice shrunk to an even smaller size, "I was wrong. I tend to not notice what's in front of me in hopes I can deal with it my own way on my own time. I wish I hadn't wasted all that time with that bastard."

"I wish you hadn't either, but you did," Percy replied, then let out a soft sigh. "Can you even look at me?"

In a flash, her grey eyes darted to meet his, "I'm sorry."

"Are you really?"

"I made the biggest mistake of my life thirteen months ago, do you know that? I jumped at the chance of a new relationship because I didn't want to see you hurt again."

"What does this have to do with me and my emotions? How do you know what I can and can't handle? In fact, it had the opposite effect of what you intended," he said angrily. She was surprised that his tone changed, but she still continued.

"We were getting close," she started, "too close. So close that I was beginning to realize how much you mean to me. I got afraid that I would lose you altogether if anything horrifying happened as a result of our relationship going to the next level. I wound up driving you away when I accepted to date Jason, and that was the biggest fault I could ever have made. I just wanted to push you back a couple steps, not push you away from me completely."

Her eyes began to water at the thought, and she continued, "So here's my apology along with my confession: I would give anything to rewind my life and to get the last year back, but I know that won't ever happen. All I ask is that you don't hate me... because I, well, I..." she trailed off, a hot tear rolling down her cheek.

"...you?" he asked after the period of silence, his heart clenching at the sight.

"I'm sorry for crying," she said absentmindedly. She felt that crying was the biggest form of weakness and vulnerability, and she hated to do it and she rarely did. At this point in time, she didn't care as much as she normally would.

"Don't be," he said. He moved over and reached for a box of tissues on his night stand and held them out for her, "Here" He always had a soft spot for her, even if they were fighting.

She pulled a few tissues out of the box and dabbed at her eyes, "I… I love you, Percy; I love you more than anything. More than my parents, more than any of our other friends... but I was scared. I still am scared."

He couldn't meet her eyes again, "You're just saying that because you want a rebound fling, isn't that right? You just want me to console you in your state of need and then it'll be over, right?"

That badly struck a nerve.

"What?" her eyes widened as she looked at him. "Do you think I'm that shallow of a person to use another person for my own lust and need?"

"Well you like to desert people who love you, so I have no idea, maybe you'd use them, too."

"I didn't mean to desert people who…"she trailed off, and then gathered what she had overlooked. "Is it the same way in which I just said towards you or... is it the other kind of love? Like brother/sister love."

"I refuse to be the rebound from your shitty relationship, Annabeth," he stated clearly, now turning back to her. "The only reason to be in a relationship with someone is if you have true feelings and nothing less. You can't force something that's not there and you can't just try. You have to _feel_ it, and I felt it with you, Annabeth!" his voice picked up momentum as he stood up. "I felt it, with _you_, and I swore to the Gods that maybe, just maybe, you felt the same way! But _no_, as my luck would always have it, you go off with some other bastard who I couldn't even stand, leaving me to be forgotten in oblivion. And now you come back saying you love me the day when you brake it off with this guy and you expect me to open my arms and welcome you back with a kiss and adoration? To the girl who pushed me out of her life when she, at the time, was my life? How would that feel to you, if the person you believed you were in love with just pushes you away and tells you to, basically…"

"Rachel, Calypso," she simply said.

His rant stopped abruptly at those two names and realized where the stories aligned.

"I didn't know how to react to you liking me back. I thought that you liked Rachel and the two torturous weeks when you were at Calypso's Island; I was worried to death." she argued.

"At least I never pushed you so far away that we weren't speaking for a year!" he shot back, looking down at her. He crossed his arms across his green t-shirt and heaved a heavy breath. "I never ignored you for months on end, did I?"

"No, you didn't."

"What did you have to gain from doing that?"

"Absolutely nothing." The tears began to fall again, and she wanted nothing else more to be wrapped up in those arms. She missed being hugged by him. "It's one of my biggest regrets."

"What's the biggest?" he asked, even now wanting to go over and give her a hug despite what his brain was screaming.

"Never telling you how I felt sooner, how I wasted all these years, how I lost my chance I had with you," she said softly, and then wiped her eyes. "All for that bastard who wound up turning around and stabbing me straight through the heart."

"You weren't really falling for him, were you?" he asked, scared to find out what the answer might be.

"Actually, after thirteen months, no, I wasn't falling. I liked him, sure, but I never felt any more love than I would for Grover. I was _in love _with someone else," she mumbled softly.

"It killed me to see you turn your back on me and everyone so easily," he said softly, then took a step closer to her. "But it kills me even more to see you unhappy." He held out his arms for her tentatively, unsure if she would take his advance for a hug. She looked up at him, and looked at his extended arms. "Come on," he urged gently.

She stood, and then completed the hug, leaning her head in the crook of his neck. Just smelling his scent, the smell of the sea and something she couldn't quite explain brought her back to times where she would just lean against him when he wasn't paying attention and just take in the smell of him; it nearly broke her heart in two the way how he accepted her back. She knew it was somewhat forced for the better, but she still definitely was happier than she was before.

"It's all right if you don't want me in your life anymore; I'll understand if you want nothing more to do with me and you hate me. We can say our goodbyes now and you'll never have to see me again," she said quietly, not wanting that to happen, but not wanting to appear too clingy, as well.

He spoke softly, "Firstly, I still am still upset, but not as much as before. But I will eventually get over it. Secondly, I could never hate you, ever; despite my brain telling me one thing, my heart says another. Lastly, I think you made the right decision."

"What do you mean?" she replied, her head still in the crook. "How did I make the right decision?"

"You came clean to me even when there was the possibility I could've kicked you out, and you dumped that bastard. That, and you came back to me. I missed you.." he rubbed her back comfortingly.

After a few minutes of silence, still wrapped up in each other, he asked, "Can you make me a promise?"

"Anything," she replied, pulling away slightly to look into his eyes. She didn't realize how close they were to each other until she could feel his breath on her forehead.

"No matter what happens to us, can you never pull that stunt on me again? Not talking to me for a year for another guy?"

She smiled weakly, seeing the emotion behind his sea green eyes, "I promise." She couldn't break her gaze with his for the life of her; there were a couple times before this where she was drawn in. There was such a conflict of emotions in her; firstly, she dealt with the heartbreak of her ex-boyfriend cheating on her, but then at the same time, her heart was trying to mend itself quickly feeding off of Percy's love for her and that look in his eyes.

"I don't want to ever lose you," she whispered softly. "I know not everything will be perfect between us, but I want to try. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow... but someday, and maybe someday soon."

He nodded, a small smile gracing his handsome face. Normally being in an embrace with her for this long would be really awkward, but he felt comfortable with her, the most comfortable he had felt all year.

"Our lives will never be perfect, Annabeth. We're demigods,"

She still couldn't break his gaze; she was being drawn in. Those rosy cheeks, flushed with the blush of their closeness, the glistening of his eyes, happiness finally shining through, hurt and betrayal finally leaving. He looked gorgeous, and she couldn't resist.

The minute her lips brushed his, she knew that it was destiny. They felt like velvet against her own lips, and she loved it. She could sense his surprise, but in almost an instant he kissed her back, pushing his lips against hers in acceptance. Before it could register in his mind completely what was currently happening, she pulled away, and out of the hug.

With a small smile on her face, tears still fresh on her cheeks and a mess of her hair, she thought she must have looked horrifying; he thought she never looked more beautiful.

With the smile still remaining on her face, she said, "Thank you for not completely shutting me out of your life and for being you throughout this mess. I know I can count on you for anything."

He was still stunned. "So, uh, _what_ was that?" he asked, in regards to the kiss.

She blushed, "I just wanted to show you how appreciative I am of everything you've given to me as well as how much you mean to me. And I know nothing is ever going to be exactly the same, but I'm willing to try if you are."

"Try what?" he honestly wanted to try kissing her again, but he composed himself.

"Us," she stated as if it was the most common thing to talk about.

"Oh, I see," he said, thinking about the idea that he had pushed to the back of his mind for so long. He missed and still like that idea.

"Since we already forgave, why don't we forget what happened and start anew," he suggested.

She grinned, "I think I like that."

Moving forward and wrapping her in a hug again, he said, "Let's try that idea of us. What do you think?"

She returned the hug, "I love that thought." With that they kissed again. Everything was back in its place; Percy and Annabeth were together and she reconciled with everyone.

_The wonderful ways of forgiving and forgetting, _was Annabeth's last thought before going to bed for the day.

**How did you like it? Please Review!!!**

**-**_**azngirl123**_


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